A REALISM OF GLORY: LECTURES ON CHRISTOLOGY IN THE WORKS OF PROTOPRESBYTER JOHN ROMANIDES

Orthodox hagiography has a single purpose: to point toward the specific therapeutic Way that leads to the realism of God’s uncreated glory. The lives of the saints, which culminate in the experience of the divine light, are open to anyone who would take up his cross and follow Christ, though this illumination is not individualistic, but rather is ecclesial, since each member is deified through incorporation into a very real body of Christ. As Fr. John Romanides avers, "the key is ... glorification" because correct Christology cannot be conceived apart from 1) knowledge and application of the correct ascetical method of reaching perfection in Christ through spiritual fatherhood and the Sacraments, and 2) the presupposition that the inhominization of Christ as the eternal Image of the Father is the only possible solution to the problem of fallen man’s bondage to corruption and death, since man was made to become the glorified image of the Image.